Experian Marketing Services has released a new study on email acquisition and engagment tactics, which finds that 52% of marketers have included animated GIFs in email campaigns. The study also reports that 44% of opens are on mobile devices and 78% of brands use sales associates to collect email addresses. 

A new study by Econsultancy polled marketers on digital opportunities and asked them to identify the ones they found the "most exciting" for 2013. Leading the list was mobile optimization at 43%, up from 38% in 2012. Close behind were Targeting and Personalization and Social Media Engagement, each at 35%. Social Media Engagement is down from 54% in 2012, while Targeting and Personalization was not seen as exciting enough to even include in the 2012 study. 

An update to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act stalled in the last congress in November, but Senator Patrick Leahy, the bill's author, is expected to announce on Wednesday that it is his top technology legislation priority for the incoming congress. The rewrite to the ECPA would require government agencies to obtain a search warrant in order to access email messages more than 180 days old. Leahy might also renew his push for legislation that would make it a crime for a company to hide a data breach from its customers.

Companies such as AOL, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook have been legally obligated since 1998 to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children when they find child pornography on their networks. In recent years, some of these companies have gone beyond alerting the center when receiving complaints, and have developed sophisticated image scanning software that identifies offending files passing through their networks. The Office of the Attorney General in Virginia explains that these tactics are perfectly legal even without a warrant, as it is not a government entity doing the searching, but a private company that wants to …

Most prescription drug spam is not a scam at all, but a sophisticated globally distributed affiliate marketing and ecommerce operation. A researcher at the University of California San Diego placed over 800 test orders on online pharmacies found promoted in spam emails, and reports that for all but one of the orders he received the products he purchased. The companies that send the spam emails typically receive a 30% - 40% commission for orders placed.

A startup service called Shopmine culls items from users' Pinterest feeds and turns them into a daily email of purchaseable products. The service selects products from the boards the users follow and vets selected items for purchasability, to ensure that they are available for purchase online before including them in the email. The email links back to the promoted item in a Shopmine product page where purchasing options are listed. 

In an upmarket variation of its $1 messaging program, Facebook is reportedly allowing users of the service to send a message to CEO Mark Zuckerberg for $100. A Facebook spokesperson commented, "We are testing some extreme price points to see what works to filter spam."

Facebook recently introduced a program where users of the site can pay $1 to send a message to other users they do not personally know. A recent study by AYTM Market Research finds that 90% of consumers do not intend to use this service. Brands, however, may find it more attractive. In April 2012, 46% of marketers used Facebook messages, but the same group reported that only 19% expected to continue doing so over the next 12 months. The new program aims to make messaging more attractive to brands. 

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a system called GmailValet which relies on a pool of online workers to personally sort and filter an inbox. Despite the apparent expense of hiring people to do the work of technology, initial tests found that at California's minimum wage of $8/hour the service would cost the average user only $1.80 per day.

A new study by Listrak finds that 19% of e-retailers are sending emails to shoppers who abandoned carts and left the store, encouraging them to return and complete the purchase. The figure rose from 14.6% in 2011, spearheaded by smaller retailers who nearly doubled their adoption of the practice in 2012.